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Army to roll out new camouflage
Change affects Fort Irwin soldiers going to Afghanistan
FORT IRWIN • Soldiers from Fort Irwin and other posts deploying to Afghanistan this summer will hit the ground wearing the Army’s latest version of combat camouflage.
The Army announced that soldiers will suit up in a new uniform called MultiCam, which officials say offers better protection specifically for the topography of Afghanistan starting in July.
“There’s a lot of different terrain in Afghanistan,” said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings. “You can start out in the desert and move into a wooded area” in one mission, he said.
MultiCam will replace the current Army Combat Uniform, or ACU, a design featuring a pixelated camouflage design that was distributed Army-wide in 2004. Deploying soldiers will receive the new uniforms in July and soldiers already fighting in Afghanistan will switch over to MultiCam in the fall, said Cummings.
MultiCam’s design features darker colors and rounder camouflage patterns that appear to harken back to the Battle Dress Uniform, or BDU, of the 1980s.
Prior to choosing the new uniforms, the Army tested MultiCam and another design — which was essentially the current ACU design with brown shades added — on two units based in Afghanistan in the fall of 2009. Field tests showed that the MultiCam was 21 percent less detectable than the other uniforms.
The total cost of switching uniforms has not yet been determined, according to Debi Dawson, spokeswoman for the Army’s equipment division. Officials are still deciding whether to switch uniforms across the Army, according to Cummings.
Fort Irwin’s 557th Maintenance Company, which is slated to deploy to Afghanistan this summer, will be among the units donning the new camouflage, according to fort spokesman John Wagstaffe. There are also two units scheduled to rotate through the National Training Center preparing to head to Afghanistan in August and September, he said. Wagstaffe said that soldiers will likely wear the new uniforms while training at the fort’s simulation Afghani villages.
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